Robert Steele

Applying a Fuzzy Trust Model to E-Commerce Systems

Stefan Schmidt, Robert Steele, Tharam Dillon, Elizabeth Chang
University of Technology, Sydney

Abstract

Moving towards automated service selection, contract negotiation, and contract fulfillment remains a promising vision for E-commerce systems. Trust is one of the main reasons why this vision is not put into practice in current E-commerce systems. Various theoretical models and technical concepts are in place to facilitate crucial factors such as system interoperability or communication-level security. However, proven models, to measure social values such as trustworthiness, reputation or credibility of service consumers and service providers in loosely coupled, distributed E-commerce systems, are the missing factors which prevent the adoption of automated service interaction. This paper demonstrates the application of our Fuzzy trust model in an E-commerce platform. We apply an exemplary business scenario to demonstrate the usage of our Fuzzy trust model.